John Wesley Iliff

John Wesley Iliff
Born(1831-12-18)December 18, 1831
McLuney, Ohio, US
DiedFebruary 9, 1878(1878-02-09) (aged 46)
Resting placeFairmount Cemetery
SpouseElizabeth Iliff
ChildrenWilliam Seward Iliff
Edna Iliff (1871-1951)
Louise Iliff (1875-1966)
John Wesley Iliff Jr. (1877-1879)
Parent(s)Salome Reed, Thomas Iliff

John Wesley Iliff Sr. (December 18, 1831 – February 9, 1878) was a Colorado cattle rancher who is the namesake of the Iliff School of Theology in Denver.[1]

Biography

Iliff was born on December 18, 1831, in McLuney, Ohio to Salome Reed and Thomas Iliff.

He attended Ohio Wesleyan in Delaware, Ohio but did not graduate. In 1857, at the age of twenty-six, his father gave him $500 in cash, and he moved to Ohio City, Kansas, where he opened a retail store. In 1859, gold was discovered in Colorado. He moved to Denver, Colorado to open a new retail store on Blake Street, trading supplies for livestock from new immigrants, then fattening them on the open range and using the profits to buy land in northeast Colorado, creating the largest ranch in Colorado history, where he raised as many as 35,000 heads a year to sell to Union Pacific construction crews, becoming a millionaire known as "the Cattle King of the Plains", leaving his fortune to found Iliff School of Theology.[2]

Death and legacy

He died on February 9, 1878.

When he died, Iliff's empire included 15,558 acres of prime land and 26,000 head of cattle, worth millions today.[3] He became the largest and most successful cattle entrepreneur the west had ever produced. "No man was ever known on the frontier who had Mr. Iliff's genius for handling cattle and conducting successfully large operations."[4]

The town of Iliff, Colorado was named for him.[5]

Iliff Avenue in Denver and Aurora, Colorado, which goes past the Iliff School of Theology, was named for him.

In 1960, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.[6]

References

  1. ^ J.M. Buckley and Philip Schaff and Henry Codman Potter and Samuel Macauley Jackson (1896). The American Church History Series: A history of Methodists. p. 665. ... the Iliff School of Theology, a gift of W. S. Iliff, an alumnus of the university, as a memorial of his father, John Wesley Iliff. Mrs. Elizabeth Iliff Warren has endowed the School of Theology with $100,000. ...
  2. ^ "John Wesley Iliff, Sr. (1831-1878)". Iliff School of Theology. Archived from the original on November 8, 2010. Retrieved 2009-07-07. John Wesley Iliff was the son of Salome Reed Iliff and Thomas Iliff, a wealthy Ohio cattle farmer. Born in McLuney, Ohio, on December 18, 1831, John remained in his home state for his education at Ohio Wesleyan in Delaware, Ohio ...
  3. ^ Fetter, Rosemary (January 23, 2002). "Iliff staked claim as Colorado beef baron". The Denver Post.
  4. ^ Jenkins, Tom (2004). "Hardworking John Wesley Iliff became the most prominent cattle baron in Colorado". Wild West Magazine. No. October 2004.
  5. ^ Dawson, John Frank. Place names in Colorado: why 700 communities were so named, 150 of Spanish or Indian origin. Denver, CO: The J. Frank Dawson Publishing Co. p. 28. Archived from the original on 2016-11-08.
  6. ^ "Hall of Great Westerners". National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Retrieved November 22, 2019.